Control Chaos - Control Chaos

"Software in Thirty Days" Table of Contents First Chapter Jeff Sutherland and I have done it. We wrote a book together, our first joint writing since the initial publication of Scrum in 1995. What prompted us?

What is Extreme Programming (XP)? - Definition from WhatIs.comExtreme Programming (XP) is a pragmatic approach to program development that emphasizes business results first and takes an incremental, get-something-started approach to building the product, using continual testing and revision. Kent Beck, author of Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change, developed the XP concept. According to Beck, code comes first in XP. However, Beck emphasizes that in order to write the code, you have to write a test for it first so that you will know when your code succeeds.Sit Down and Learn from the Master: The ScrumMaster's Responsibility to EducateWhen I took my first Certified ScrumMaster course, I was taught that one of the responsibilities of the ScrumMaster is to educate. The role of educator is an increasingly important one, as we see more and more organizations adopting Scrum at the enterprise level. However, the role is often neglected by ScrumMasters as they become busy supporting their teams' goals of delivering value to their businesses. Most Agile implementations are led by the IT organization and are then spread to other parts of the enterprise as those groups work with IT.

Software Process ModelsMany process models I came across so far have their background in a certain engineering setup which I call "the happy engineering world". I called it this way, because in this "world" you design systems where requirements can be set up from the beginning, sub-components may be even available to a large extend and very often resources are not strictly limited. As an example may serve an airport traffic control system.Advantages of the "As a user, I want" user story templateIn my user stories book and in all my training and conference sessions on user stories I advocate writing user stories in the form of: “As a <type of user>, I want <some goal> so that <some reason>.” While I consider the so-that clause optional, I really like this template. At a conference, someone asked me why.

Agile Test Methodology Vs V ModelThe object of the article is to uncover the disadvantages of the traditional V model of testing over the Agile test methodology. In doing so we will cover the following points: What is V model? Advantages and disadvantages of V model.What is Agile Testing?Reinventing Agile: From Value to SolutionsinShare5 This post is a synthesis of two posts I originally published on my other blog "unRelated". One of the key foundations and most attractive principle of Agile or Lean methodologies is that "Everyone can help each other remain focused on the highest possible business value per unit of time". I am certainly a strong supporter of that principle. However, value is often difficult to assess, I would actually argue that it is easier to identify what has less or little value, but what we think as valuable can potentially lead to many false positive, or simply be "business-as-usual" and hide the broader structure of the solution. "User Stories" are the corner stone of identifying and delivering value:

The Death of the V-ModelThe V-Model of software development is widely in use today, especially in the defence industry. It’s a pity then, that it is fundamentally flawed, and that it is responsible for misleading project managers into thinking that the project they are about to undertake is well understood. The reality is that the more the V-Model is used as a tool to manage the software development process, the more likely that project is to fail. The following diagram is a typical representation of the V-Model.Use cases vs User stories in Agile/Scrum developmentTL;DR – User stories aren’t use cases. By themselves, user stories don’t provide the details the team needs to do their work. The Scrum process enables this detail to emerge organically, (largely) removing the need to write use cases.

What Lifecycle? Selecting the Right Model for Your ProjectA cynical senior manager said, “It feels as if I’m stuck between the traditionalists and the agilistas. We can’t use phase-gate anymore, because it’s not ‘agile’ enough. And the last time, when that multisite project tried Scrum, they failed miserably.Introduction to User Stories1. Introduction to User Stories A good way to think about a user story is that it is a reminder to have a conversation with your customer (in XP, project stakeholders are called customers), which is another way to say it's a reminder to do some just-in-time analysis. In short, user stories are very slim and high-level requirements artifacts. 2. Initial User Stories (Informal)

Life cycles: methodologies comparedHistory The "waterfall model", documented in 1970 by Royce was the first publicly documented life cycle model. The model was developed to help cope with the increasing complexity of aerospace products.